Avoiding spammers in affiliate programs

How can companies avoid paying spammers and having their brand associated with spammers?
One of the easiest ways to avoid spam is to not pay for acquisition email. Simply don’t set up an affiliate email marketing program. There are a lot of folks who don’t like me saying that, and who have argued vociferously with me over the years. But email is not a good medium for acquiring new customers if you don’t intend to spam. Email is a great medium for talking with current customers who are engaged with a brand and a company, but currently it is a poor way to acquire customers without spamming.
There are ways companies have successfully used email to acquire customers. There are actually newsletters that contain content but also sell advertising in the newsletter. Look at the newsletters you are receiving, that are relevant to your business space. One example of a newsletter that did this successfully is Magilla Marketing published by DirectMag. Every week there were 4 new articles from Ken Magill, supported by advertising in the newsletter and on the website. These kind of ads will let you reach your target market without spamming.
Now, I know that there are a lot of marketing departments out there that are going to insist that there aren’t useful newsletters or advertising venues for their field and the only way they can acquire customers is to use affiliate programs. I’ve had clients tell me the exact same things. Often they came to me as clients because their own email marketing was blocked by a blocklist or a spam filtering company due to their hiring of spammers. They wanted to police and clean up their affiliate program without having to give it up.
Policing affiliate programs can be done, if the company invests the time and energy into screening the program.
For every company that wants to send email advertising your company ask them to provide information about their company and their email program.

  1. Company name, address, domain, opt-in policies
  2. Main website
  3. Outgoing mail IP(s)
  4. Domains used in email
  5. Where do they get their email addresses?
  6. Where can you sign up for their list?

If they have more than a dozen outgoing IPs, or use rotating domains, turn them down. If they refuse to tell you where they get their email addresses, turn them down.
The single most important thing you can do is sign up for their list. Take a new email address at gmail or hotmail or yahoo and sign up for their list. Watch what you get from there. Is this traffic something you want your brand to be associate with? Does the mail get to the inbox or is it filtered into the bulk folder? Are they using hashbusters or other scummy techniques to bypass filters?
Check to see if the IP they use to send mail is one of the IPs they told you about. If not, why not? Check reverse DNS for that IP, and the IPs around it. Does it look like a snowshoe range? Check the IPs against blocklists like Spamhaus and check the domains against SURBL and URIBL. Check the whois records for the domains in the email. Are they hiding behind privacy protection?
You don’t need to do a full, in depth analysis like we did on the AARP spam, but you should know what kind of company you are hiring to represent your brand. How can you afford to let spammers be that first contact on your behalf?

Related Posts

Affiliate Liability

Eric Goldman published his notes on affiliate liability from his talk at SMX West. He mentions some cases where a company was sued under CAN SPAM. Unlike general legal statutes, where non-agents cannot create liability for a company, under CAN SPAM companies are liable for the actions of their advertisers. Despite this statutory difference, both the FTC and private litigants have had difficulty proving in court that the advertised company was liable for the activity of the affiliate.
Any company that is using affiliate marketing on the Internet needs to take a look at the article and the best practices defined by Eric.

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Spam from mainstream companies

Yesterday I wrote about spam I received advertising AARP and used it as an example of a mainstream group supporting spammers by hiring them (or hiring them through proxies) to send mail on their behalf.
My statement appears to have upset someone, though. There is one comment on the post, coming from an IP address allocated to the AARP.

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Mainstream spam wrap-up

Over the last week Steve and I have posted about the AARP hiring affiliates to send spam on their behalf: starting with the poorly done email message, moving through the process of identifying the responsible entity and then walking through the details of how we tracked the spammer.
Why spend a week writing about the AARP spamming? I initially posted about the AARP spam because it was such a horrible example of email marketing. Not just that it was spam but it was careless spam. Plus, in a lot of my interactions with marketers, clients and delivery experts I hear a lot about how “real” companies don’t spam, don’t support spam and wouldn’t ever let someone spam on their behalf. This isn’t true, not even a little bit.
The post actually came to the attention of the AARP and someone from their national headquarters commented that it was “just spam” and had nothing to do with AARP. I’ll be honest, I was annoyed with their reaction. I did my homework before calling the AARP out and was convinced this mailing was authorized by them.
Over the next 2 days Steve investigated the spam and reported on his findings. He only documented the full investigation on one of the emails I received (yes, there were multiple emails sent to the same address, most of them coming from different domains owned by the spammer). We did this to document that yes, mainstream companies do hire spammers and that trail can sometimes be tracked. We also wanted to show the lengths spammers and their customers will go to in order to get through filters and spam blocks.
A lot of mainstream groups do support spam and hire other people to send it on their behalf. Many of these same companies expect ISPs to hurry up and let mail through because “we’re a legitimate company” when their mail is blocked.
To be fair, some companies may not initially intend to support spam, but when they see the money rolling in they can’t stop. Some may pay lip service to no-spam policies, but deliberately turn a blind eye to spam advertising their company. Some hire spammers, but with enough distance between themselves and the spammer that they can deny they knew about the spam.
Every company using email for acquisition without actively managing the email program is at risk of spammers being hired on their behalf. There are some things that can be done to lower the risk of spammers being used to send spam, but the spammers are clever and if the payouts are high enough they will spam on your behalf.
There are things a company can do to minimize the chances that an affiliate program will attract spammers. Check back tomorrow for some processes that have proven effective for my clients.

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